Phonological Awareness (PA) is the child’s awareness of the elements of words and sentences. The child learns that sentences contain a number of words; words contain a number of syllables and syllables contain sounds. It also includes the child’s knowledge of the sound structure of language and his / her ability to manipulate sound.  For example, sounds can be heard at the start, middle and ends of words. The sounds in the English language are made up of the vowels (a,e,i,o,u) and consonants (all of the other letters in the alphabet). All these skills are extremely important for literacy.

The following activities were selected from “ The Phonological Awareness Companion” Linguisystems 1995. There are many more pre-literacy activities that your child could work on - however the 10 examples provided will at least give you a good start.

1. SAY IT - COUNT IT
• Give the child a set of five blocks.
• Ask him/her to listen to a short sentence and then put a block in a container for each word that he/she hears
• Ask him/her to count up the number of blocks that he/she put in the box
• If your child has difficulty with the activity, complete the activity with him/her providing hand over hand assistance.

 2. SAY IT - CLAP IT
• Ask your child to ‘clap out’ a short sentence using a clap for each of the words in the sentence.

 3. JUMPING WORDS
• Place hoops or pillows on the floor a small way apart.
• Say a sentence out aloud first at a normal rate and then slowly.
• Ask your child to jump into a hoop (or onto a pillow) as you say each word.
• Ask your child to count up the number of words in the sentence by counting up the number of hoops on the floor (or the number of pillows).

 4.  COMPOUND WORDS
• Practice counting out the syllables in compound words - these words are the easiest to practice.
• For this activity you can use the same activities as were described in steps 1-3.
• A list of useful compound words are as follows:
Cowboy   footstep  daydream  highway  flashlight
Rainbow   toothbrush   birthday   lifeguard  football 

 5. CLAP YOUR NAME
• Help your child to practice clapping out his/her name.
      e.g. My  name   is  ma – ri – net.
• Clap out another family member’s name and see if your child can guess who it might be.

 6. WHAT WORD IS IT?
• Choose a theme for the activity e.g. animals, transport, names, games etc.
• Start saying words aloud - in segmented parts e.g. e-le-phant. Ask your child if he/she can tell you what the word might be.

 7. SOUND MATCH
• Look through books together and hunt for pictures which start with the same sound. E.g. Can you see anything on this page which starts with the letter ‘p’
• Try and make a list together of words that start with the same sound. Sometimes it is nice to target the sound that a child’s name starts with e.g. M for Marinet, mommy, mouse, milk, etc.

 8. SOUND ENDINGS MATCH
• Complete the same activity as described in number 7 except target end sounds e.g. “Which words end in the ‘sh’ sound?” 

 9.  SAY IT - MOVE IT
• The ‘say it - move it’  technique involves moving a block forward for each sound in a word.
• Choose a group of two sound words to target first and put 2 blocks in front of your child; e.g. go, so, me, tie, bye, sigh, low, he,  pie, fee, etc.
• After the child has mastered this step you could try three sound words, put 3 blocks in front of your child; e.g. pet, fed, zip, fish, food, can, coat, kite,  etc.

10. BOOKS
• Look at a picture together and identify some words that have three sounds.
• Write these words down for your child.
• Work together to identify the three sounds in the words by underlining the sounds as you say the word out loud.  e.g.  F I  SH
• This is an excellent task that can aid in improving reading and spelling skills.

© Marinet Van Vuren, DSC 2009

All rights reserved. No part of this work can be reproduced in any form, or by any means without the express permission of the author or by Down Syndrome Centre info@downsyndromecentre.ie

Got a question for Marinet vanVuren? If so, drop her an email here.